It’s interesting how we’ve served our lives into two: the order and the chaos. We’ve made up our own rules to create safety in a world that’s very much unpredictable. Many of these rules to increase stability often mean a reduction in the intensity of our emotions.

To be professional, or to maintain order, one must be neutral. To have a successful Thanksgiving dinner means not ruffling any feathers, especially when you don’t like what you are experiencing. The leaking of your true experience is proof of the discipline that is lacking.

Nothing really feels real. In fact, everything from the dinner to the meeting is a performance. We sit and listen to a failed plan being repositioned as a pivot or an optimization. We lean forward to make sure the speaker knows we’re paying attention, but our chin is resting on our hand, and our eyes are wide yet vacant, mirroring false engagement.

The need to comply comes with putting up with mediocrity. We fail to live up to our values, and when we realize it, it’s a call for strategic alignment. If we all pretend the fire isn’t burning, we can enjoy the warmth of the flames.

When the leader calls for alignment, it’s not true alignment. It’s not mutually agreed-upon principles. Instead, it’s the death of the individual. It’s submission and the suffocation of having a voice to say that you don’t believe what’s going on is right.

In fact, you think it’s a disaster. However, the only things you can do are keep it in… or vent. When venting isn’t aimed at the person who needs to hear it, the idea of gossip also just seems cowardly.

The Cost of Omission

Politeness doesn’t exist for unity. True unity occurs as an integration of differences. Politeness doesn’t foster connection. It only seeks to eliminate the friction of chaos.

The problem with the industrial complex, or a rigid familial structure, is that it cannot operate on honesty. We hide ourselves at work, just as much as we hide ourselves in a hierarchical family structure.

We get by without people trying to figure out the real us through politeness. It’s the grease that keeps the gears of the system still churning. The truth that gets eliminated isn’t due to lying, but due to the things that go unsaid.

The silence allows the system to consume our time, our energy, and our identity without ever hearing a word of protest.

We mistake manners for kindness because it’s easier to identify them as such. In reality, manners is an agreement between two people too terrified to be seen. By being polite, we tell the other person that we are willing to overlook their obvious deficiencies and limitations if they promise not to call out ours.

This is the way we hide. We don’t allow others to be our mirrors because the pain of being exposed is so great. We’d rather hide just to keep the peace of the dinner party. To maintain this etiquette is to agree that the mask is all that matters.

We definitely know the costs of telling the truth. The cost of telling the truth is typically social ostracism. To accurately describe your experience to those who don’t want to hear typically comes with the risk of losing one’s job, being labeled as difficult, or the tears of someone you love dearly.

These are prices too high to pay, and so we pay the tax to keep the peace.

However, the tax on lying by omission accrues compound interest. It comes at a cost to you as an individual. We start to lose ourselves in the conformity of what we dislike.

At some point, we realize that losing our job or no longer receiving the invite is a temporary effect on our truth, but abandoning our truth altogether is an amputation.

It builds up inside us for so long that the moment we finally do say something “rudely”, it’s not an act of aggression, but an act of self-preservation. At this very point, we’ve decided that we are a person, not a persona.

Why You Gotta Be so Rude?

The need to speak one’s truth typically comes when someone initiates with a lie. It’s the moment when our experience feels gaslit. A point of failure is explained away as something that hasn’t happened as it has.

We are told to accept the explanation, but to let the statement go unchallenged is to surrender the last bit of yourself you have left. The catalyst to finally say something is the moment our biology’s demand for reality overrides the need for social safety.

The words we spew out will always be categorized as rude because they no longer have a filter. The only way to get our words out is directly. We abandon the idea of the sandwich method and make the direct leap.

The “rude” response is the refusal to budge on integrity. It’s about looking the lie right in the face and pointing it out. This comes without the softening of starting the sentence with “I feel” or “In my opinion.”

By removing the etiquette, you also remove the armor. You’re standing exposed, but you’re finally standing.

Once we’re finally standing, the atmosphere of the room changes. We’ll most likely be greeted with silence. The coworkers, siblings, or loved ones are in shock. Not because you told the truth, but because the manners contract was breached.

We’ve violated the law of mutual fear. For a quiet second, there is a mixture of horror, but also a quiet envy. For this quick second, the person you’ve stood up to realizes the contract they’ve unknowingly signed.

At this moment, the mask has slipped, and it can’t be put back on again.

We Didn’t Cause the Fire

With the mask now gone, the version of you that existed in your listener’s mind is now gone.

However, the show must go on. The system must patch up this glitch in the matrix. To do so, your character is called into question. As a result of you finally saying what’s on your heart, you are labeled “difficult,” “unprofessional,” or “unstable.”

Your words are treated like a malfunction rather than a revelation. Calling you crazy and making you feel crazy protects the other person from realizing that you might be the only sane person in the room.

Those who now know your experience handle you differently. There’s more distance than usual. You aren’t invited to go to the party or the meeting. No one wants to hear from the glitch in the matrix.

They say that you shouldn’t burn bridges, but this typically comes at a cost to our own well-being. As the bridge burns, a new realization dawns. The fires cut off a path to a place you never really wanted to reach. The peace guaranteed for compliance wasn’t real.

The destruction of telling your truth wasn’t a loss, but clarification. When we lose a relationship, we grieve it until we realize that going further along the path means our own erasure. In truth, when it comes to burning bridges, we aren’t the ones who caused the fire.

The moment we are unafraid to share our truth is the moment that we no longer rely on collective performance. We aren’t holding up the world for those who wouldn’t care if it collapsed on us.

Anything that reflects your experience, but goes against the grain of the collective, will always be seen as rude. There is no tact to hide behind. The words used were needed to cut the umbilical cord of expectation.

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